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How listening to our customers fuelled EroSolve Wet Steam’s breakthrough
Written By IMI Publications
August 6, 2025
Steam is essential for running steam turbines and generating electricity in thermal power plants. The power industry’s key tasks are safe, cost-effective electricity generation and ensuring that energy supplies are readily available when needed. Using steam appropriately without any wastage is paramount in electricity generation operations, because high-energy steam leakages can cause significant profit loss as well as lost production time.
Steam leakage is a serious problem in today’s power facilities, and the root causes are many. However, when it occurs in large, critical turbine bypass valves, it can affect safety, financial performance, and plant availability.
Our awareness of the steam leakage problem and our desire to address it was the starting point for IMI’s EroSolve Wet Steam solution, which has saved the power industry considerable sums since its introduction in 2019. In this article, IMI Valve Doctor™ Pavithran Kottarathil explains how our customer-centric approach helped deliver this transformative design.
The right solution at the right time
To begin with, we conducted an in-depth examination of the power market, speaking with 130 power facility operators worldwide to understand their pain points, and steam leakage ranked among the top. Within IMI itself, EroSolve’s potential was immediately apparent. Many of our sales and technical experts have heard about the steam leakage problem and directly witnessed it. We learnt that this problem occurred across many valve types and throughout a range of different plants. Our detailed analysis of the problem and the potential operational losses confirmed that addressing this chronic issue successfully meant significant financial and performance benefits for power plant operators. By addressing steam leakages, we could save customers money and minimise the ever-present threat of unexpected downtime.
For many of these sites, steam leakages were not simply an irritation or afterthought but a hugely disruptive and expensive problem that occurred almost immediately after plant start-up. Of the 130 customers initially interviewed, 80 confirmed that it was seriously impacting their operations and bottom line. Many were unaware of why it was happening.
Across power plants worldwide, installed turbine bypass valves were supposed to deal with dry steam. However, condensate or wet steam flowed through many of these valves, particularly during start-up. Steam accelerated the condensate droplets at and immediately downstream of the pressure-dropping stage within the valve. The flashing of condensate enhanced the effects. While impinging on the sealing surfaces of valve internals, the high-velocity droplets caused erosion and steam leakage.
Once this damage has occurred, it’s only a matter of time before it reaches a critical point where losses are inevitable. Turbine bypass valves are closed shut during regular plant operation, so the continuous leakage of high-pressure, high-temperature steam leads to a loss in operational efficiency and profitability while also creating safety risks. Often, this leads to plant repair and maintenance shutdowns.
Due to the introduction of renewable energy, traditional thermal power plants cycle more than before, and the number of plants starting up and shutting down is increasing yearly. This irregularity creates the ideal conditions for wet steam to appear more frequently.
Scaling for success
If we were to make a real difference for our customers, we had to proceed on the assumption that our earliest installed units would work as intended. Our solution needed outstanding materials and features to make this happen, as we were trying to solve a chronic problem that remained unsolved for years. This was a ‘leap of faith’ based on our ever-evolving technical knowledge of flow control and our customers’ most complex challenges.
This may appear cavalier for some, but we knew that the EroSolve design worked. Rather than waiting several months to gauge success, we had an opportunity to demonstrate its potential quickly at different sites worldwide; our customers could understand the root cause of the problem and easily visualise our solution's underlying principle.
To say this approach worked would be an understatement. As of 2024, IMI has delivered 700 valve upgrades, with several repeat enquiries and orders.
Perhaps most importantly, we know that EroSolve significantly influences industry conversations whenever the issue of steam leakage in turbine bypass or similar steam valves is raised. Customers want to learn more about condensate, its effects, and how to manage it. This demonstrates EroSolve’s value in customers' minds worldwide, with its status moving from product to solution.
To discover more about our EroSolve Wet Steam technology, please visit: EroSolve Wet Steam
